Wi-Fi races towards 802.11n and past 100Mbps

Two of the companies that are making the chips that will power the next-generation Wi-Fi standard have announced that they have achieved interoperability at speeds in excess of 100Mbps. Using the Draft 1.0 specification for the 802. ...more

December brings seven Microsoft security bulletins

Microsoft has announced seven bulletins in its monthly security update affecting Windows, IE, Outlook Express and Visual Studio. This is one more than it projected last week, having added a fix for a buffer overflow issue in a Windows Media file format. Last Thursday, Microsoft highlighted the problem as it had seen exploit code publicly available and has turned round a patch sharpish, which it rates as Critical. ...more

RIAA issues 750 more writs to University users

The US music industry pressure group the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) has fired off over 750 lawsuits against students and others who have been downloading music for free from P2P networks. The suits accuse 757 individuals of engaging in copyright infringement, including computer network users at 17 different colleges throughout the US. RIAA says that the people concerned not only used P2P networks such as Grokster, Kazaa and eDonkey but also used the student run i2hub p2p network to distribute music. ...more

Microsoft releases May's bulletins

Microsoft has released its security bulletins for May with critical patches for Windows and Exchange as well as a further Moderate rated patch for Windows. The Exchange patch covers Exchange Server 2000 with Post-SP3, up to Exchange Server 2003 with SP2. A vulnerability in the Exchange Calendar could allow an attacker to create a message with certain vCal or iCal properties that would allow remote code execution. ...more

China to buy 200 million desktop licences from Sun

Sun has forged a multi-year deal with the China Standard Software Company (CSSC) to install 'at least' 200 million copies of Sun's Linux-based Java Desktop System as part of a government-backed project to bridge the digital divide in the country. The deal will see roughly 500,000 to a million copies a year installed from the end of this year. Financial details were not disclosed; Sun sells its Java Desktop at $100 a head in the US. ...more